Chapter 28Vasily #2
It’s still hard to stomach the fact that Kostya nearly killed me, that if not for Dima showing up at just the right time, that would have been my body they stood beside for real.
That everyone would have thought Kostya was the grieving ever-faithful cousin worthy of every condolence that’s been thrown at him.
And if I was dead, there’s no chance in my mind that Ana would have killed herself— whether she loves me that much or not, she’d never abandon Artom like that— but I wouldn’t put it past Tony to stage a suicide the same way Kostya did.
I could be watching my actual funeral right now as it would have really happened if Kostya and Tony got their way, and here Kostya is, patting Dima on the back and sharing his sympathies, guiding Dima away from the casket as though there’s important information to share.
And once they’re fully turned, with nobody behind them except Ana and me and our caskets, I catch Kostya slipping something into Dima’s pocket.
We’re a high enough distance up it’s hard to see. It’s also wrapped in a black cloth that Kostya stuffs back into his own pocket. He was keeping fingerprints off it. And for a split second, the light hits just right and the angle is perfect that I can see a glint of glittery rose gold.
A month from now, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize it, not with that glimpse that I caught. But a week ago, standing in the print shop in Santa Clarita, I held that gun. It was the final prototype we made there, the ultra-lightweight ghost gun capable of getting through airport scanners.
The Ghostest Ghost.
Of all the guns I don’t want anyone in the ATF getting, it’s that one.
“Tony’s just come out,” we get from Sid, outside watching Kseniya and Alex.
With the situation we’re in and the importance of silence, we don’t have mics in the actual car that connect directly to ours.
The biker’s our in-between. “He’s putting on a ski mask but no gloves.
He does have a bag on him, and he is approaching the packages. ”
The packages. Someone’s been watching too many crime dramas.
“I don’t see a gun either. No holster. Going radio silent. Will check in if necessary.”
If necessary, as in if Kseniya and Alex are actually harmed.
I dressed up for this. It’s going to be a big entrance, and I know I don’t hit what everyone thinks a pakhan should be— it’s been a sticking point ever since I ascended to the position— but a big entrance? I’ll do them right every time.
So the fine tux I managed to score in my size with just a couple on-site alterations at a tailor in Denver comes with a silk pocket square, which I discreetly hand over to Ana about ten minutes into our funeral.
Nothing’s even happened yet, not really.
They have Father Niko up there as well as a priest from the church Ana attended as a child, and they’re reading a biblical passage in both Russian and English, Niko reading the line and then the Catholic priest translating it for the benefit of Ana’s people.
The passage isn’t anything unusual, drivel about angels and the afterlife and shit, but it’s really touched Ana.
“Thank you,” she mouths with careful dabs to protect the eye makeup she spent too long on this morning. Wouldn’t it be better if it was streaky though? We’re at a funeral, after all. But it’s our own funeral. I guess the tears are self-serving.
And because she’s being so careful about her makeup, I’m respectful about kissing the back of her hand instead of her lips, which I’d prefer. I would absolutely love to rise from the dead wearing Ana’s lipstick.
Maybe on my collar.
I lean in to make that special request, knowing she’ll deny me, but a guy’s gotta shoot his shot. I’m interrupted by a loud bang that has me pushing Ana down in case it was a gun.
Not a gun; a door. It’s followed by the pounding of footsteps and Tony shouting, “Somebody help, I just found them in a car like this!”
My heart slams into my ribs. Sid’s been quiet, and usually no news is good news, but nothing’s a guarantee here. Something terrible may have happened to him too. Tony could be carrying a body.
He could be carrying my sister’s body to her husband and baby.
The screams from some of the women below and the shuffling of feet don’t make me feel any better, but once I peek up, I’m relieved to see that he’s walking behind Alex and Kseniya, who are both gagged and bound but on their feet.
The worst I see from them is the fact that they were gagged with the same rope they were bound with and it’s chafed at their mouths, leaving red welts across their cheeks, but those will heal.
The bullet holes I imagine putting in Tony won’t.
The crowd goes into action, but almost everyone is a criminal or surrounded by crime. Nothing gets too wild. The women who panic are ushered outside, the people who know they’re not connected to this and don’t want to be around for whatever shakes out follow behind, the Catholic priest slips away.
Father Niko is one of the first people to actually rush forward, stopping Miguel from rushing to Kseniya, as well. He’ll see his wife soon, but he’s holding Maribel. The baby needs to be kept out of harm’s way.
Several undercover agents are suddenly really interested in their collars, which are certainly hiding mics.
Switchblades magically appear from several men’s pockets to cut through Kseniya and Alex’s binds. It’s hard to tell if Tony attempted to untie them or not, but everyone seems to believe he did and have no choice but to hack through the knots.
Since Tony was surely the one who tied them himself, I’m doubtful about him trying.
And still up in the front, three rows back, Dima is steaming mad as the ruse unfolds before him, but he plays dumb. “Oh my gosh, what happened to you two?”
Oh my gosh? I mouth to Ana, who snickers but probably taught him that.
“I found them in your car!” Tony shouts.
“Yeah, I’ve been waiting for the right time to bring them in,” Dima says innocently. “But they weren’t bound—"
Father Niko looks like he’s about to faint. “It was you? You had them?”
Dima tilts his head in confusion. “Yeah? I was told—”
Miguel, also in on the bit— and apparently aiming for the Flagstaff Friends and Family of the Bratva Oscar award— shouts over him, “You kidnapped my wife?”
“What?” I’m legitimately stunned as Dima lifts his hand to his chest and says, “What?” even more dramatically a second time, as though he’s expecting they’ll edit the first one out in post-production. “I had them at a safe house! Kostya told me to collect them. They weren’t kidnapped. ”
Kostya recoils at the accusation. “Why would I tell you to kidnap Vasily’s sister?”
“It wasn’t kidnapping!” Dima shouts back.
And then Kseniya, God love her, whimpers, “You kidnapped me? You kidnapped us? You told me you were bringing me back to my family! Was it you who tied us up?”
“What are you talking about? Who tied you up?”
“I don’t know! It was someone in a suit and a ski mask. It could have been you!”
I decide to change my mental Oscar vote to Alex, in one of those sleeper roles where they don’t really stand out and you don’t notice they’re actually a critical character until they deliver a bombshell. Alex’s bombshell?
“Who died?”
Ana’s shoulders jerk. She’s holding back a laugh. None of this should be funny, but it’s so ridiculous from our elevated, informed perspective that it’s hard not to.
Kseniya screams at the news. Ugly screams. Wails.
I know for a fact she can’t cry on command, it was always her downfall growing up, but she makes up for it in hysterics.
The undercover agents are all starting to move in on Dima with small, measured steps, so I’m hoping Benedetti communicated to whichever agency they’re from that Dima is not the bad guy here.
Or, if not, that no one’s super trigger happy.
They had to have seen how many people in attendance are packing, so they should know if they do fire, it’s going to end in a massacre.
My son’s down there.
I get queasy again.
Ana grabs my hand before I can reach for my pocket, and that does help some .
With the attention shifted to Dima and Kseniya, Tony and Kostya are both watching with unabashed glee. This is going better than they planned, I’m sure. Tony’s grin remains, but Kostya’s stretches into a grimace as Kseniya shouts, “Was it you, Dima? Did you kill them?”
Ooh, those suicides were supposed to remain suicides.
I wonder if autopsies would have been done, if they would have been suspicious of the subcutaneously-administered heroin.
Are the needles different sizes? Would they have been able to tell just from my corpse that it was actually a syringe swapped with my migraine medicine?
There’s no such thing as a perfect murder. Kostya knows that as well as anyone here.
“It was an overdose!” Dima yells, finally starting to move between the benches toward her, which gets the undercover agents moving more at a tortoise’s pace than the initial snail’s pace. “Heroin.”
“Where did he get it from? Why would he have taken it? What did you dooooooooo?”
Okay, that line was a bit too much, but with the way everyone’s watching it like a tennis match, they don’t care.
“I didn’t, I swear! I—excuse me,” he says to the agents who have filled in around him. “I just gotta—”
“You just gotta stay where you are, son,” drawls an agent as he holds up a badge. “FBI.”
Which is the moment Janson quietly slinks to the other side of the church.
“I didn’t do anything,” Dima protests, and I think everyone in the building feels at least a little bad for him because, again, we are all criminals here, and it is all our fears that we get arrested for some dumb thing we didn’t do, only to have our entire life stories come out. No one wants to go down like Gotti .
“You kidnapped us, you jerk?” Alex says.
“You got a gun there?” the FBI agent asks.
“What? No. I—what the fuck?” Dima whispers, genuinely surprised when he looks in his pocket and sees it. Those things weigh under a pound and are ultra-thin. I doubt he noticed Kostya slip it in there.
Another agent comes up from behind and pulls it out.
“Jesus, what is this thing?” he hisses. “Is this a real gun?” He flops it back and forth between his hands, examining it, finally finding the release for what functions as a magazine on it, although it’s little more than a spring and a rake, more like a stapler than a gun.
“Didn’t you have a couple murdered security guards last week?” Kostya says. “I wonder if that gun was used.”
And the crazy thing is enough law enforcement know enough of us that they don’t even question this randomly thrown out fact. No doubt word got around that the warehouse was one of mine, and here we are at my funeral.
Handcuffs come out, and Ana bats my hand.
Right, yeah, once they go on, it’ll be a pain to get them off.
I carefully rock the Virgin Mother out of the way. She’s a heavy statue, but if something happened and I bumped into her and broke her, I’d definitely go to Hell.
I take her place, and honestly, I’m a little bummed no one notices me standing here.
“Before you arrest him, there’s something you should probably know,” I call out.
My great aunt Irena, who’s been resisting my great uncle Arkadi’s attempts to pull her toward the exit, looks up at me, gasps, and faints.